In a series of works, culminating in the 2021 solo exhibition Eat The Rich, Bob Bicknell-Knight portrays various billionaires as trophy hunters. Trophy hunting is the act of hunting of wild game for human recreation. The trophy is the animal or part of the animal kept, and usually displayed, to represent the success of the hunt. The game sought is typically a large or impressively ornamented male, such as one having large horns or antlers. At the end of a successful hunt, the hunter will usually pose next to the slain animal for a photograph, to be distributed to friends and family members.
The works were originally inspired by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, and a personal challenge he had set himself, to only eat meat he'd killed himself for a year. Zuckerberg had entered into the challenge in an effort to be more thankful for the food he has to eat. He felt it was irresponsible not to remember that the animals he ate used to be alive. In a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stated that there was a year when Zuckerberg was only eating what he was killing and had a penchant for goat meat. Supposedly he would stun goats with a taser, cut their throat with a knife and have their bodies sent to a butcher to prepare. Being served goat for dinner whilst attending a dinner party at Zuckerberg’s house was Dorsey’s most memorable encounter with Zuckerberg. The original trophy hunter works, depicting Zuckerberg, imagining that he took this interest in animal killing further, becoming a trophy hunter.
